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Amelia Chassé

The GOP needs to do better with low-information voters

Low-information voters trend younger and are more likely to be unmarried. They typically remain at least nominally ‘undecided’ until the bitter end, and generally do not read or watch extensive political or news coverage. They may care about economic issues in theory, but the tax rate doesn’t impact their day-to-day existence.

This means that campaigns must develop clear, concise, and punchy messaging, and find a way to integrate it into these voters’ daily lives.

Democrats – Barack Obama in particular – go after these voters with gusto. The 2008 Obama campaign broke ground by advertising on Xbox video games, prompting thousands of stoners to get off the couch and out to the polls. In 2012, when young women visited a beauty blog, they were likely greeted with video ads of Eva Longoria or Scarlett Johansson telling them Obama was fabulous. And lest we forget the infamous ad where Girls star Lena Dunham invited her fellow young women to make their “first time” special with Barack Obama.

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From the GWB days, and with the advent of BHO, campaign dynamics and strategies have changed considerably. The GOP has to find a credible way to appeal to those young, unmarried voters. Gotta talk to them in a language they understand. Traditional style campaigns ain’t gonna cut it (especially for Presidential elections). The dems are way ahead. The GOP needs to catch up. Chop chop.

Informing the low-to-no-information voter. Interesting concept. Not sure how one does that but I’m sure some liberal pundit will “inform” us.

clippermiami on November 22, 2012 at 9:06 AM

From the GWB days, and with the advent of BHO, campaign dynamics and strategies have changed considerably. The GOP has to find a credible way to appeal to those young, unmarried voters. Gotta talk to them in a language they understand. Traditional style campaigns ain’t gonna cut it (especially for Presidential elections). The dems are way ahead. The GOP needs to catch up. Chop chop.

Something like, Jobs, not food stamps?
Something like Contract with America with short easy to recall and repeat bullet points?
Something that the top of the ticket pushes and the bottom of the ticket can sign onto and repeat frequently.
A coalesced platform that includes things 70% plus of the American people support?

Something like that?

I guess Romney was the wrong man for the job.

Just go look at my 3,000 page web page to see what I am talking about Romney was never going to connect to these voters.

I am going to hold my nose and vote for Romney is also not a recipe for having the base get out their friends and family to vote for Romney. If the base is holding its nose, the friends and family are not likely to be convinced of anything.

Winning elections is about getting voters to the voting booth. Romney needs allies to do that. Instead of making allies and inspiring them to go that extra mile, him and his supporters described us as bigots, whiners, traitors, worse than Obama and any number of other unsavory characterizations.

Instead of asking for our vote to allow him to be our president, he demanded our vote so he could be the president of the center/ center left. Not a highly inspiring campaign.

Low information voters are frequently a person working 60 hours a week, so his wife can remain home to care for their children, with limited time to spend on politics, time which is also demanded by his family vying for his attention, time to devote to God, volunteer time for charities. Or a mom caring for a home and several children who have needs 18 hours every day, with demands exceeding even that high number, along with time for God and charity.

They cannot read 87 page books written in legalese to see what the platform of the candidate is. Government should not be so exceedingly difficult to understand that it takes a degree to even comprehend individual aspects of it.

So not all of them are leeches. Considering how cloudy the Republican party likes to leave things, acting like Democrats, it makes it much harder for a low information voter to make an easy decision as to who to vote for.

If the truth doesn’t move them, nothing will. Bottom line is that low information voters live in a fantasy world.

They don’t think who they elect will really impact their day-to-day lives. Because they’re the same ones who don’t have to worry about meeting payroll or paying taxes.

ButterflyDragon on November 22, 2012 at 10:19 AM

Exactly; winning with low-information (and low-income and low-motivation and low-IQ) voters is going much like the fight on abortion. We’re losing because responsibility is unpopular and making someone else pay for your foolishness is “in”. That’s not something that can really be fixed politically, folks.

If the truth won’t move Mr. and Mrs.Mooch, they can go to hell on the Democrat welfare plantation. It is NOT worth trying to out-lie and out-pander to a segment of the population that has repeatedly voted for “Uncle Santa Claus Sam”.

In his defense, it’s d@mned hard to compete with an economic plan that can easily boil down to “I give you free stuff” for the plebs.

MelonCollie on November 22, 2012 at 10:36 AM

It is not much of a Defense. “I give you free stuff” is not a new concept of the Democrat party, or of politics in general. Well over 200 years ago our founders and those that inspired them to write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution talked about politicians bribing the people and people voting for other people’s money.

Romney needed to have an easy to access document that was short and to the point.

Bumper sticker sized statements. Cut, Cap and Balance.
Short one page explanations of the bumper sticker sized statements.
Longer explanations for the more informed and time invested types to dig into.
A large number of people running for office signing onto these bumper sized statements and promoting them daily.

As long as people who live at public expense are allowed to vote, America will continue down the road to serfdom.

logis on November 22, 2012 at 10:58 AM

I am all for fixing this aspect. No net paid taxes, no vote. Or you get one vote point per say $10,000 you pay taxes on, with an upper limit of 25 vote points. Something that takes away the takers and moochers vote power.

I am all for fixing this aspect. No net paid taxes, no vote. Or you get one vote point per say $10,000 you pay taxes on, with an upper limit of 25 vote points. Something that takes away the takers and moochers vote power.

astonerii on November 22, 2012 at 11:04 AM

Well, I suppose we could go flat out plutocratic, where votes literally have to be bought by direct payment to the government. You would probably only want to do that kind of thing for part of the elected government — maybe a part that determines how that money is spent, while having a one-citizen-one-vote elected body that makes actual laws.
Part of the problem with our government is that government spending gets conflated with law making.

Part of the problem with our government is that government spending gets conflated with law making.

Count to 10 on November 22, 2012 at 11:19 AM

I would rather just have a limited constitutional government.

My current ideal for the nation is the following.

Popular vote for president, yes, it gives big cities and states more power, but the president is for everyone.

State selected Senators who write all bills (laws). If the state wants to allow the people the vote or to appoint on some other way, their choice.

Straight vote by the people for those bills (laws). Perhaps once every 3 months all items the Senate passed are put to popular vote.

All federal court benches have to be positively approved of after each end of year session by the states, or those seats be vacated and new appointments required. This is vital for the Supreme Court to remain legitimate in my view.

Every state has the right to have a popular vote to succeed from the nation, and based on their population amounts of the debt owed to them precalculated as well as military assets allocated and so forth.

I would like to see some more constitutional limits placed on the government.

No direct payments from the federal government to any individual not employed by the federal government. (no social security, no medicaid, no welfare, no unemployment “insurance”…)

Cap on spending of 10% GDP, with exactly half of all spending to be on the military.

Rainy day fund requirement to be equal to 1/4 GDP. Held in commodities, particularly those that would be used in war time, such as copper, titanium, GOLD, staple foods and so forth.

Balanced budget requirement. Government may only spend the money they received the prior year. Military wartime spending would first come from military stockpiled funds, then borrowing.

Change all taxes to straight sales taxes. Tax is only on consumption, not on creation.

Federal government may own no land other than Washington DC and Military bases. States control the first 10 miles of their shore lines, the federal government the remainder.

There are more, but that is the base line… If I was able to convince the people of this nation to pick a winning solution for the future.

Well, I suppose we could go flat out plutocratic, where votes literally have to be bought by direct payment to the government.
Count to 10 on November 22, 2012 at 11:19 AM

I’m not talking about a poll tax. The problem is people who live at government expense. The “civil” “service” “workers” are strangling this country every bit as much as the other freeloaders. Having them pay a little bigger kickback won’t help anything. It wasn’t that big of a problem when less than half a percent of Americans fell into that category; but in the past sixty years, that’s increased to half the population — and growing rapidly.

You would probably only want to do that kind of thing for part of the elected government — maybe a part that determines how that money is spent, while having a one-citizen-one-vote elected body that makes actual laws. Part of the problem with our government is that government spending gets conflated with law making.

There is way too much of that aready, and a purely parasitic arm of the government would surely extend the insane and idiotic mandate system we have now.

Although it wasn’t required by the Constitution, it used to be that every state only allowed taxpayers (i.e., landowners) to vote. I’m not even advocating that. As long as you’re feeding yourself and not in prison, you’re a fine citizen. If you think you’re being treated unfairly, no problem, just quit your government job and/or stop taking government handouts, and you can vote yourself silly.